Denver Noir

About the Contributors

Mario Acevedo is the author of the national best-selling Felix Gomez detective-vampire series and coauthored the Western novel Luther, Wyoming. His work has won an International Latino Book Award, a Colorado Book Award, and has appeared in numerous anthologies including A Fistful of Dinosaurs, Straight Outta Deadwood, Psi-Wars, and It Came from the Multiplex. Acevedo serves on the faculty of Regis University’s MFA program and the Lighthouse Writers Workshop.

Francelia Belton’s love of short stories came from watching old Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents television shows in her youth. Her fiction has appeared in various publications and she was a finalist in the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Writing Competition. Now, she is on a quest to write 1,001 stories before she dies — an audacious goal for a slow writer; she is documenting her journey at Francel.Be/Writing-Stories.

R. Alan Brooks teaches writing for Regis University’s MFA program and is the author of the graphic novels The Burning Metronome and Anguish Garden, as well as his award-winning weekly comic for the Colorado Sun, “What’d I Miss?” His TED Talk on the importance of art reached one million views in two months. He hosts the MotherF**ker in a Cape comics podcast and has written comic books for Pop Culture Classroom, Zenescope Entertainment, and more.

D. L. Cordero is a sci-fi fantasy author, occasional poet, and horror dabbler working out of Denver. As a nonbinary, queer, Afro-Latinx and Taíno person, Cordero aims to write intriguing stories that center around characters from marginalized communities, without making identity the crux of the tale. Their work can be found on dlcordero.com and they can be followed on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (@dlcorderowrites).

Amy Drayer grew up a free-range kid on a charming island in the Pacific Northwest. A graduate of Scripps College and the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project, she published her debut novel, Revelation, in 2020. She also pens short stories, is an enthusiastic member of Sisters in Crime, managing editor of the museum of americana, and editor of the 2022 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers anthology. Learn more about her work at makahislandmysteries.com.

Peter Heller is the author of the best-selling novels The Dog Stars, The Painter, Celine, The River, and The Guide. He holds an MFA in poetry and fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is a former longtime contributor to NPR, and has been a contributing editor at Outside, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure. Heller is also the author of four books of literary nonfiction.

Twanna Latrice Hill is a writer, actor, educator, and activist. She earned a BA in Russian from Princeton University with minors in creative writing as well as theater and dance, an MA in Soviet Studies from Harvard University, and a masters in nonprofit management from Regis University. Hill was awarded a Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project Fellowship for 2019–2021 and lives with her service dog, Roxi.

Barbara Nickless is the Amazon and Wall Street Journal best-selling author of the award-winning Sydney Parnell crime novels. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Writer’s Digest, Criminal Element, and elsewhere. She also teaches creative writing to veterans at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. Nickless is often in the Rocky Mountains where she loves to hike, cave, and drink single-malt Scotch — although usually not at the same time.

Manuel Ramos has published eleven crime fiction novels and one short story collection. His books have been awarded the Colorado Book Award (twice) and the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and short-listed for the Edgar and Shamus awards. He is a cofounder of and regular contributor to the award-winning Internet magazine La Bloga (labloga.blogspot.com), which is devoted to Latinx literature, culture, news, and opinion. He lives in Denver’s Northside. His latest novel is Angels in the Wind.

Mark Stevens is the author of the Allison Coil mystery series — Antler Dust, Buried by the Roan, Trapline, Lake of Fire, and The Melancholy Howl. Trapline won the Colorado Book Award and the Colorado Authors League Award in 2016. Kirkus Reviews called Lake of Fire “irresistible” and The Melancholy Howl “smart and indelible.” Stevens was the 2016 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Writer of the Year and president of the Rocky Mountain chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

Mathangi Subramanian’s novel A People’s History of Heaven was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her middle-grade book Dear Mrs. Naidu won the South Asia Book Award. Her essays have appeared in the Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, and Ms., among others. She lives in Denver with her husband, her daughter, and way too many picture books.

Cynthia Swanson writes literary suspense, often using historical settings. Her debut novel, The Bookseller, was a New York Times best seller, an Indie Next selection, and winner of the 2016 WILLA Literary Award for Historical Fiction. Swanson’s second novel, the USA Today best seller The Glass Forest, was noted in Forbes as being one of “Five Novels with a Remarkably Strong Sense of Place.” She lives with her family in Denver. Find her at cynthiaswansonauthor.com.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is the author of Winter Counts, nominated for an Edgar Award and winner of the Anthony, Thriller, Lefty, Barry, Macavity, and Spur awards. The novel was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an Indie Next pick, and named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal. He lives in Denver, Colorado, with his family.

Erika T. Wurth’s literary-horror novel Whitehorse is out with Flatiron/Macmillan. She’s a creative writing professor at Western Illinois University, is a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop Scholar, attended the Tin House Summer Workshop, and is a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation. She is of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent and was raised outside of Denver where she lives with her partner, stepchildren, and extremely fluffy dogs.